Salvage

Those post-apocalyptic photographs of dying American car industry cities like Detroit seem like a planet away from New Zealand. Yet this background photo is our equivalent: a largely abandoned native timber sawmill in the King Country.

In the mid-1970s when the last unlogged remnants of the Pureora bush were about to go under the bulldozer (and matchbox), a small group of activists started tree-sitting in protest. A world-first, this unique action saved what is now one of our most outstanding and valuable native forests, and led to similar actions, notably even higher protests in the ancient redwood forests of California.

A visitor to Pureora today does not see the industrial scale of logging and destruction that took place, only the tired remnants of these activities that are themselves being overtaken by time and regeneration. Instead, there is a cycleway running from Pureora through to Ongarue, the dulcet calls of the kokako, magnificent ancient totara festooned with epiphytes, and an ecosystem in recovery.

Salvage, recovering materials from the waste stream, is inspired by the need to use our resources more wisely, and to waste less. Every action we all take to reduce, reuse and recycle, however small, is a step in the right direction. We seldom have time to really concentrate on more Salvage items, but hope to keep adding to our eclectic collection over time.

And we do hope you will be suitably inspired to explore further, and look at what you can do to shop responsibly.